Adjusting From Excessive Watering

Reducing Excessive Water Usage

We have learned of the damage which can occur from an excessive lawn watering regimen in an another article, so lets now discuss how to safely step down to a safe watering level, from when we may have been previously over-watering our lawns.

The Need To Step Down Lawn Watering

All life, including plants like our lawns have survival mechanisms built into them, these mechanisms ensure the ongoing survival of the species, and initiate whenever certain events occur.

For lawns and plants that are receiving excessive amounts of water, the lawn or plants begins to recognise these amounts as being normal to their survival, and the longer that excessive watering has been occurring - the bigger the problem we can face in repairing the lawn damage.

In suddenly reducing water supply to our lawn, these lawn survival mechanisms kick into action. The lawn is now believing it is about to die, and quickly changes all of its normal behaviour patterns to stop using its energy and food and water supplies for its normal growth, and begins shutting these actions down.

Food, water and energy is instead spent in producing as many seed heads as quickly as possible in order for the species to regenerate and survive when conditions again improve.

Clever Seeding For Survival

Unfortunately, these brilliant survival mechanisms were falsely triggered by our behaviour, and our lawn now looks awful, full of seed heads and may also be possibly getting more unhealthy too.

Watering Step Down

Stepping down from excessive lawn watering simply means reducing the water supply to our lawns gradually, when we do this over several weeks, the lawn does not go into shock, does not believe it is about to die, and will not attempt to save itself for future generations by using its energy producing masses of seed heads - instead of using its energy for its own continuing health.

Reducing watering times by a few minutes a week is all it takes to step down gradually until we get to an appropriate amount of water to be used and which is best required to maintain our lawns in optimum health.